Which TV - Advice?

[Jude - The Mad Widow]

 I want to treat myself to a new TV  but there are so many out there, - anyone on here got any advice ?  I'm told Samsung and LG are what I should be looking for. So far I'm thinking 55 inch around £1k to £1300.  Do you think its worth waiting for Black Friday... Any advice gratefully received. 

 

Ps I like all the latest facilities but not a slave to the very latest all singing all dancing...    voice activated would be good though. 

[Kingster]

@Ian Tolfree (tolf) - WSCC AO Rep might be clued up on this 👍

[corsechris]

Went through this one recently. Have had (and still got) a Pioneer plasma from 2011 which at the time, was supposed to be the best TV money could buy. Through work, I got to see quite a lot of TVs and was of the opinion that was a fair assessment - a great TV quality wise.

 

New TV would have to be good to be worth the change so I did some research. Having kept an eye open I'd already pretty much concluded that OLED would be the ideal replacement for the plasma but to my genuine surprise, I ended up with a Samsung Q-LED. I honestly didn't expect to ever buy an LCD TV, but the things they have done to mitigate the problems of LCD are impressive. The final thing that did to for me was getting the lad at Currys to put the same material on an LG OLED and a Samsung Q90 right next to one another - the manufacturers don't like you doing that!  The LG OLED had fantastic black performance but the screen was way more reflective than the Samsung, which somewhat offset that in most viewing situations, but the Samsung made an absolutely incredible job of processing some iffy source material - it looked rubbish on the LG OLED but amazing on the Samsung. Yes, I know it was post-processed....but I don't care, it looked great!  The LG showed terrible contouring, the Samsung replaced it with a smooth graduated field of colour. HDR material looked good on both as did UHD. OLED slightly better for the absolute image purist still, but I don't watch most of my TV in perfect viewing conditions, so the Q-LED won out for me. A big bonus, I never have to worry about the potential for screen burn. Always ran the plasma a bit on the dim side to try and mitigate that risk. Would likely do the same with an OLED just in case. No such worries with the Q-LED, so I can spend hours playing on the console without worrying.

 

Samsung & LG both make a good TV. Probably a good idea to get along to Currys or the like and have a play with the different 'smart' systems - see which you prefer. The Samsung one gets a bit of a blasting for the voice control, but the main system seems pretty good to me.

 

Also, consider looking at a model from last year - you can usually get a better TV for the same budget as this years models that way. Won't have the absolute latest features/signal processing/etc but that isn't always a bad thing.

 

Another factor in favour of the one I picked was the Samsung "one invisible connection" setup on their top models. There is a black brick that takes all the inputs then a thin (about 3mm) translucent cable that connects to the panel itself. This carries the signal and power for the panel so saves masses of cables behind the TV itself. This worked out great for me, as the old Pioneer had a similar external 'media box' setup, but with a Displayport and mains cable to the panel itself, so I just swapped out the boxes and wires.

 

Can't hurt to wait for the sales, but you don't tend to see much of the higher end stuff. I kept a close eye on prices for a couple of months using PriceSpy, then saw a good offer on John Lewis with a £125 voucher refund so jumped on it.

Edited November 17, 2019 by corsechris
typos

[Steve (sdh2903)]

Just shows you how perceptions can be different. I did the exact comparison that chris did and for me the LG oled came out on top!. Only just though.

 

The one connection on the samsung is very clever but not a major concern for my installation.

 

At the time the q90 qled was 150 dearer than the LG aswell. 

 

Best thing to do as chris says is visit a big currys and view them at the same time as they generally have all the big rivals in one place and see which you prefer.

[Steve (sdh2903)]

This is the one we bought.

 

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertainment/televisions/televisions/lg-oled55c9mlb-55-smart-4k-ultra-hd-hdr-oled-tv-with-google-assistant-10193150-pdt.html

 

This is the direct comparison Samsung. The q80 is cheaper but doesn't have the one cable box (I dont think) Seems the price differential has grown. I actually thought the samsung was over priced for what is a clever LCD tv. But none the less very very good.

 

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertainment/televisions/televisions/samsung-qe55q90ratxxu-55-smart-4k-ultra-hd-hdr-qled-tv-with-bixby-10191543-pdt.html

 

 

 

 

[corsechris]

I was looking at the C9 as the front runner. Very nice, but for me, and again, very much a surprise, preferred the Q90 overall. The One connect wasn’t a deal breaker but very nice to have in our setup.

 

A big part of the decision was how it handled poor source materials.

 

It’s nice to have such a difficult choice to make!

 

(went with the 65” by the way. The Pio was a 50” and wanted to go reasonably bigger). 

[Kingster]

5 hours ago, corsechris said:

big part of the decision was how it handled poor source materials.

That’s a good point. We don’t all have access to the latest highest definition broadcasts or material and I know when we upgraded from a plasma it was hard to find an led telly that could beat the plasma for it’s ability to display lower quality content. 

[corsechris]

If it was purely on the best picture on the best material, viewed under the best conditions then it would have been the LG OLED (but not by that much TBH). Despite not having burn-in issues with the plasma, I was still conscious of it being a potential issue with an OLED, so that was also a minor consideration.

 

A typical warehouse like Currys is probably the worst place to view a potential TV purchase, really bright and cluttered, although that does give you an idea how it'll look when viewing on a bright day I suppose.

 

I'm somewhat limited for UHD material at the moment, but the Seven Worlds on iPlayer is bl**** stunning. Not quite so impressed by Jack Ryan on Amazon but that could have been a bandwidth issue somewhere in the chain - it seemed to keep switching in & out of UHD/HDR which was quite disturbing to watch at times.

 

Also important though, once you have chosen your set, make sure to go through the many settings on offer - ours came set in probably the usual default modes and although some stuff looked pretty good in the high refresh, a lot of it looked very 'soap opera', which is just plain weird to my eyes. Watch everything in 'Movie Mode' now - much better, but YMMV of course.

 

I spent a while looking at some of the video reviews on Youtube too -  Digital Trends give decent not-too-techy reviews, AVForums reviews are rather more detail oriented if you really want to dig deep, although they make the point frequently that a lot of the figures and differences they quote between different sets are below the threshold of detectability with the human eye....

[Kingster]

4 hours ago, corsechris said:

make sure to go through the many settings on offer

Indeed. When we first got our UHD set, the “intelligent frame creation” setting made it appear like you were watching a starkly shot video rather than a hi res movie. Difficult to describe but everything just looked “fake”. A change of settings and it was so much better!

[Greenstreak-Andy D]

I am most impressed with our 55” OLED LG I bought exactly 1 year ago.

Picture is awesome, even sound is pretty good too. I bought a LG sound bar, I used it for 2 days and removed it! Don’t get one unless you can afford a BOSE or Sonos.

 

Andy

 

[maurici]

Everyone will have their own opinion... 

I would bet in panasonic Vieira. I own an oldish one, and quite a lot of my surroundings have bought one. Great colour panel. Decent sound. They are weak in smart apps but i don't use the built in SO anyway so... perfect combo, and the build quality and design and robustness are something superior.

Oh. Thet are not too expensive for what they are.

[tolf]

LG oled by far the best. With OLED, LG can control every pixel so you get far better contrast and colours. With Samsung QLED this is still LCD and the picture is not as good

 

Dont leave a still image or ticker tape on an oled screen for a long period of time, more than 24 hrs, otherwise you can get burn

 

However, this is unlikely to happen on a consumer tv

[Andy Banks]

When I have a fit of dreaming about buying a new TV or any AV kit, I do what I've always done and look at last year's What HiFi winners...

 

Unless there is a technology need you need to address now, if it won awards last year, it'll still be dammed good and way cheaper too.

[John Dolan - Wirral & North Wales AO]

My 5 year old Samsung lcd has noticeable shading on the screen, light spots and purple patches. Football, when the camera pans across the field, and light pictures are most affected. Don’t notice it as much on Emmerdale or Coronation Street. Strictly is fine too.

[Kingster]

10 hours ago, maurici said:

 

Everyone will have their own opinion... 

I would bet in panasonic Vieira

 

That’s what we have - the Viera plasma was a cracker and still looks really good as a bedroom telly 10 years on! A few years back got a newer Viera led/lcd/wherever and very happy apart from slightly poorer viewing angles compared to plasma. No doubt that isn’t an issue with 2018/19 models